There are moments when ideas arrive, twitch the synapses, and require immediate attention. I was enjoying a quiet winter morning: reading Walden’s “Upstream and Down” from 1938, a truly lyrical tour of one angler’s insight and passion, afterwards cooking and savoring a breakfast that brought memories of countless mornings on the road to the Catskills, the anticipation of fishing quickening my heartbeat. Suddenly a thought of tradition popped up and entwined itself with my ongoing pursuit of translucence. I was transported to the West Branch, to one of dozens of summer afternoons amid the fluttering emergence of tiny sulfurs, and the trials presented by some of our most educated and well-fed wild trout.
Away here to the bench, I secured two materials and a hook then brought the idea to life: the Partridge & Sulfur Orange, the first Translucence Series non-dry fly!
It seems that a further bow to tradition might eschew dubbing, and then blending individual strands of tying silk, orange and primrose, could produce a similar color effect. I cannot say I have ever offered a standard, traditional Partridge & Orange to one of these maddening summer trout, though it was an effective foil against the pods of winter midge sipping wild rainbows on Gunpowder Falls during my fly fishing infancy. Again, the color aspect concerns me. Many sulfurs appear in a true light yellow, and I have taken fish on Patridge & Yellow and derivative patterns when sulfurs were upon the water. Those with the orange cast are very softly colored, a hue achieved by a blend of perhaps one part of light orange and at least two parts light yellow.
I recall a beautiful Falling Spring brown that glided up and about to nick a few morning sulfurs from a quick little run on that limestone gem during it’s better days. He had no interest in any dry fly I offered but came at last to a small soft hackle sulfur, tied with blue dun dyed hen for both hackle and tail with a dubbed body of yellow silk. I can see that fish in my mind’s eye after so many years, brilliantly colored and heavily spotted, as my shaking hands pulled the tape past twenty inches there in the shallow water.
Bright Waters Catskill 